I write a lot about the hard stuff.
The masking, the loneliness, the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to get diagnosed, the Medicaid cuts, the DOJ memos, the particular exhaustion of existing in a world that was not assembled with you in mind. It’s important. It’s real. I’m not stopping.
But today I want to do something different.
Today I want to write the post that isn’t a warning or a call to action or an explanation of something people got wrong. Today I want to write the one where I tell you the things I actually, genuinely, sometimes embarrassingly love about my brain.
Not the sanitized inspirational version. Not the “autism is a superpower!” poster version that flattens the whole experience into something palatable. The real ones. The specific ones. The ones where I’m aware I sound a little ridiculous and I’m choosing to say them anyway because I think we don’t do this enough — sit with the things that are genuinely, actually good — and I’m tired of only having half the conversation.
So. In no particular order. Here are the things I love about my autistic brain.
The way I love things
I cannot do anything halfway. This is occasionally a problem. It is more often a gift.
When I get interested in something — genuinely interested, the way my brain does interest — it’s not a casual thing. It is a full deployment of resources. It is reading every available piece of information on the subject. It is staying up until 2am because the next article is right there and it’s really good actually. It is becoming, within a surprisingly short period of time, the person in any given room who knows the most about whatever this is. Which has come in useful more times than I can count and has also made me absolutely insufferable at parties, but that’s a different post.
Hyperfocus isn’t just liking something a lot. It’s more like: I will now learn everything about this topic and forget to eat for six hours because my brain is locked in. Yes. Exactly that. And the things that have come out of that state for me — the expertise, the work I’m genuinely proud of, the rabbit holes that turned into real skills — I would not trade them.
The neurotypical version of interest, as far as I can tell from observation, is more like a comfortable warm light. Mine is a spotlight. It’s occasionally blinding. It is never boring.
I can smell a lie from three rooms away
Many autistic people have a natural directness that cuts through social pretence. In a world full of small talk and hidden agendas, this refreshing honesty can be invaluable.
Here is the thing they don’t tell you about the autistic directness: it goes both directions. We tend to be honest because we genuinely don’t see the point of the performance. And we tend to notice dishonesty for the same reason — because we’re paying close attention to what people actually say, and we notice when it doesn’t match what they do.
I am not always right about this. I want to be transparent. Sometimes the pattern I’m reading is not the pattern that’s there. But I am right enough, often enough, that this has functioned as a very useful early warning system over the years. Several situations I got out of before they became disasters. Several people I trusted less before they gave everyone else a reason not to trust them.
My brain is extremely good at noticing when something doesn’t add up. This is not always comfortable. It is usually accurate.
The thing about fairness
Many autistic people are highly empathetic and have a strong moral compass. They may become distressed by injustice and motivated to change the world for the better. Plenty of autistic people are not afraid to stand up for their beliefs and challenge things they see as unjust.
I have a sense of fairness that is frankly somewhat inconvenient to live with. It does not turn off. It does not negotiate. It notices inequity in rooms where other people have decided to look at the ceiling, and it makes me say the thing that needed to be said but nobody was saying.
This is the thing that built this page. The inability to sit quietly while something wrong was happening. The compulsion to name the thing that everyone could see but nobody was putting words to.
It is exhausting sometimes. It has also, cumulatively, meant more than I can measure. The times I said the thing that someone else needed to hear and didn’t have words for yet. The conversations that shifted because one person was unwilling to pretend the room was fine.
My sense of justice is not a switch I can flip. It’s just in there all the time. I have, over the years, stopped thinking of this as a bug.
The attention to detail that borders on concerning
Many autistic individuals excel in visual processing. They may quickly recognize patterns, spot inconsistencies, or recall precise details.
I notice things. All the things. The typo on page 47 that everyone else missed. The inconsistency in the argument that didn’t quite land. The change in someone’s tone that they probably thought was imperceptible. The detail in the corner of the image that turns out to be the most important thing in it.
This is occasionally exhausting because I cannot turn it off. It is also the thing that makes me very good at what I do. Web development, writing, advocacy — all of it benefits from a brain that cannot stop noticing. From a brain that is constitutionally incapable of skimming.
My brain reads everything in HD whether I asked it to or not. Most of the time I’m grateful for this. The times I’m not are the times I notice something at 11pm that I then cannot unknow and have to figure out what to do with.
Worth it. Usually.
The special interests that became my whole actual life
Special interests are intensely focused passions central to autistic identity, joy, and self-regulation.
I want to tell you about the things I have loved with my whole self over the course of my life. The ones that consumed months. The ones I still think about. The ones that turned into skills, into careers, into parts of my identity so integrated I can’t imagine myself without them.
Autistic brains often respond strongly to their special interests, releasing dopamine and reinforcing the behaviors related to these interests. This heightened reward sensitivity helps explain why engaging in special interests or hyperfocus can be highly motivating.
What this means in practice is: when I am doing the thing, I am fully doing the thing. I am not half-present. I am not multitasking. I am in the thing, entirely, and the quality of what comes out of that state is different from what comes out of divided attention.
My special interests built my career. They built this website. They built the relationships that matter most to me, because the people who came in through a shared interest know a version of me that is genuinely, completely myself.
The intensity isn’t the problem. The intensity was always the point.
The honesty that sometimes gets me in trouble and I’m keeping it anyway
I cannot tell you something is fine when it isn’t. I have tried. The attempt is visible to everyone in the room. My face does not cooperate with the project of saying something I don’t mean, and my words tend to say the true version of the thing even when I’m attempting to say the diplomatic version.
This has occasionally made situations more complicated than they needed to be. It has more often meant that people know where they stand with me. That when I say something is good, they know it’s actually good. That when I say I’m glad to see you, I’m genuinely glad to see you. That there is no subtext to decode, no performance to read behind, no wondering what I actually think.
My yes means yes. My no means no. My “this is great work” means I genuinely think it’s great work. In a world where a lot of people are saying things they don’t mean in ways that are technically not lying, this is worth more than I used to think it was.
A note about writing this
I want to be clear about something. This is not the “autism is a superpower” post. The things I’ve listed above exist alongside the things I’ve written about before — the sensory overload, the masking, the burnout, the loneliness, the systems that weren’t built for this brain. Both are real. Neither cancels the other out.
What I’m doing here is completing the picture. Because I’ve noticed that we spend a lot of time in this space — and in advocacy spaces generally — talking about what’s hard, what needs to change, what we’re fighting for. Which is important. Which I will keep doing.
And also — occasionally — I want to sit with what’s good. Not to perform gratitude or find the silver lining. Just to be honest about the whole thing. Which includes the parts that are genuinely, actually, specifically wonderful.
This brain is mine. I’ve had it my whole life. I spent a lot of years wishing it was different. I’m not doing that anymore.
And if you’re autistic and you’ve been spending time wishing yours was different too — maybe make your own list. The specific ones, not the inspirational ones. The things that are actually, genuinely, specifically good about how your brain works. The things that would be gone if someone magically neurotypicalized you.
You might surprise yourself.
💙 — Tessa (they/them)
P.S. If your brain is the kind that finds a piece of clothing or a mug or a sticker and immediately needs it because something about it just fits — you might enjoy the Autistic Swag collection. Just putting that out there. No pressure. (My special interest in things that feel right is very much present in this recommendation.)
